To most of you, I suspect this is nothing new. I'm not what you'd call a highly experienced anime watcher, I have only extremely rarely tried following currently airing seasonal anime schedules,...
To most of you, I suspect this is nothing new. I'm not what you'd call a highly experienced anime watcher, I have only extremely rarely tried following currently airing seasonal anime schedules, for the most part I watch older stuff based on acclaim and personal appeal, and I have maybe subscribed to Crunchyroll for a lifetime cumulative total of 2 months, probably almost a decade ago.
I didn't really know this was going on on Crunchyroll but I saw this article elsewhere and found it absolutely captivating. The author goes into lots of detail about the behind the scenes industry side of this, the technical details and software of typesetting subtitles, the history of Crunchyroll and Funimation's subtitling and typesetting practices, and ultimately demonstrates how and why they're getting worse. The article itself, almost as if it demonstrates the same values, is presented and formatted in a really pleasing way, too.
My first run-in with really noticing how big of a difference really nice typesetting in subtitles makes was the Chyuu-PAS fansub of Revue Starlight, which I watched. I was impressed with the choice to use these art deco style fonts at a time when I was not even really aware of the difference between official subs and fansubs. Then, when I wanted to show stuff from the show to my friends, (such as the transformation sequence) which was what I had seen clips from and got me interested in the show. If I've caught your interest in this sequence by mentioning it, you can watch a version of it here.
Originally it was officially on HiDive, and I know it did not do song lyrics (likely similar separate-licensing-for-music reasons as given in the article) but I can't comment on what typesetting it had as I never saw that version. Today, the official service it is on is Prime Video, which due to the constraints of their subtitle system, would not have any of the typesetting seen earlier in my comment. I don't have Prime, so I can't go gathering comparison shots.
Anyway, I'm definitely straying away from the topic a bit, but really the experience of watching this fansub in particular and that if I tried to recommend Revue Starlight to my friends today, knowing they're gonna see it with Prime Video's bottom-text subtitles only is what primed me to passionately and vehemently agree with and want to share this article.
I hope y'all don't mind if I come off naive sharing this here, maybe none of this is anything new to those of you who hang around and post here in ~anime but I just hope that maybe it sparks a bit of discussion, or maybe for those of you already aligned with this, perhaps by sharing the article I've offered you a conveniently linkable version of a well researched and formatted argument against Crunchyroll's new practices.
Yeah, this has been upsetting me for a little while now. I already almost refuse to watch Netflix and Amazon anime because it's really not uncommon to just have them do some janky subtitles at...
Yeah, this has been upsetting me for a little while now. I already almost refuse to watch Netflix and Amazon anime because it's really not uncommon to just have them do some janky subtitles at some point that end up just detracting from the experience. Sure, there may not be things like on screen text or multiple people talking every episode, and sometimes don't happen in a show at all, but there's no way for me to know that without watching it. And if I'm watching it, then when those things do crop up, I'm pulled out of the show as I suddenly need to decipher who's saying what and what signs are where.
In the event that a fansub group doesn't pick a Netflix/Amazon show up in the first couple weeks, I often don't bother. I'd much rather just wait a few years, maybe remember that they had a show I wanted to watch, then do a quick check to see if anyone has put out some quality fansubs.
But, alas, at least for me, this enshittification may be coming at an opportune time; my interest in anime has already been rapidly dwindling these past couple years, this season definitely included. So it's possible my dwindling interest may be due in part to this, but it's hard to say. Maybe I'm just being a drama queen, but if this trend keeps continuing, then I don't know how much longer I can watch anime.
To most of you, I suspect this is nothing new. I'm not what you'd call a highly experienced anime watcher, I have only extremely rarely tried following currently airing seasonal anime schedules, for the most part I watch older stuff based on acclaim and personal appeal, and I have maybe subscribed to Crunchyroll for a lifetime cumulative total of 2 months, probably almost a decade ago.
I didn't really know this was going on on Crunchyroll but I saw this article elsewhere and found it absolutely captivating. The author goes into lots of detail about the behind the scenes industry side of this, the technical details and software of typesetting subtitles, the history of Crunchyroll and Funimation's subtitling and typesetting practices, and ultimately demonstrates how and why they're getting worse. The article itself, almost as if it demonstrates the same values, is presented and formatted in a really pleasing way, too.
My first run-in with really noticing how big of a difference really nice typesetting in subtitles makes was the Chyuu-PAS fansub of Revue Starlight, which I watched. I was impressed with the choice to use these art deco style fonts at a time when I was not even really aware of the difference between official subs and fansubs. Then, when I wanted to show stuff from the show to my friends, (such as the transformation sequence) which was what I had seen clips from and got me interested in the show. If I've caught your interest in this sequence by mentioning it, you can watch a version of it here.
While looking for clips to share in turn, I noticed how much worse other versions were (seriously, what the hell is this?) (I'm not sure where those came from or what the official ones on HiDive looked like), I was so disappointed. I mean, Chyuu-PAS did it so well! Look at the name on the chalk board, it looks like chalk and is appropriately matching the camera's perspective of the chalkboard. It's even in the long-shot of the classroom while not being practically readable. It's almost believable that the original animators put it in there, like she wrote her name on the blackboard in romaji also, except that it disappears when you turn the subs off.
Originally it was officially on HiDive, and I know it did not do song lyrics (likely similar separate-licensing-for-music reasons as given in the article) but I can't comment on what typesetting it had as I never saw that version. Today, the official service it is on is Prime Video, which due to the constraints of their subtitle system, would not have any of the typesetting seen earlier in my comment. I don't have Prime, so I can't go gathering comparison shots.
Anyway, I'm definitely straying away from the topic a bit, but really the experience of watching this fansub in particular and that if I tried to recommend Revue Starlight to my friends today, knowing they're gonna see it with Prime Video's bottom-text subtitles only is what primed me to passionately and vehemently agree with and want to share this article.
I hope y'all don't mind if I come off naive sharing this here, maybe none of this is anything new to those of you who hang around and post here in ~anime but I just hope that maybe it sparks a bit of discussion, or maybe for those of you already aligned with this, perhaps by sharing the article I've offered you a conveniently linkable version of a well researched and formatted argument against Crunchyroll's new practices.
Yeah, this has been upsetting me for a little while now. I already almost refuse to watch Netflix and Amazon anime because it's really not uncommon to just have them do some janky subtitles at some point that end up just detracting from the experience. Sure, there may not be things like on screen text or multiple people talking every episode, and sometimes don't happen in a show at all, but there's no way for me to know that without watching it. And if I'm watching it, then when those things do crop up, I'm pulled out of the show as I suddenly need to decipher who's saying what and what signs are where.
In the event that a fansub group doesn't pick a Netflix/Amazon show up in the first couple weeks, I often don't bother. I'd much rather just wait a few years, maybe remember that they had a show I wanted to watch, then do a quick check to see if anyone has put out some quality fansubs.
But, alas, at least for me, this enshittification may be coming at an opportune time; my interest in anime has already been rapidly dwindling these past couple years, this season definitely included. So it's possible my dwindling interest may be due in part to this, but it's hard to say. Maybe I'm just being a drama queen, but if this trend keeps continuing, then I don't know how much longer I can watch anime.